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 The meeting with Commissioner William Bratton came only hours
after de Blasio conceded he was still unable to say whether officers
in the nation's largest police force had embarked on a widespread
work slowdown in the two weeks since two policemen were ambushed and
killed.
The number of arrests and court summonses has plummeted across the
city since the attack, with some police precincts recording a
statistically improbable zero tickets for misdemeanors, suggesting
many officers are ignoring all but the most urgent crimes.
"We don't believe that there is a willingness on the part of City
Hall to solve these problems," Patrick Lynch, the president of the
city's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said in a statement on
Wednesday evening.
Lynch said he was also speaking on behalf of the detectives',
sergeants', lieutenants' and captains' unions.
 "So we as union leaders will take the time to sit down and discuss
these issues and come up with solutions to them," the statement
continued, stopping just short of saying they had given up on talks
with the mayor. "We wish there was a leader in City Hall."
The union leaders, who have said they have not sanctioned a
slowdown, met with de Blasio last week but said that the meeting
resolved nothing. The police department did not immediately respond
to questions about the commissioner's meeting.
While it is not unusual for union leaders to speak witheringly of a
mayor, City Hall officials have been unable to point to any
precedent for hundreds of uniformed police officers turning their
backs on the mayor in disdain, as has happened at the slain
officers' funerals and other public events.
In contrast to his predecessors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg,
who between them ran the city for 20 years, de Blasio campaigned for
office in 2013 on a platform that criticized some police tactics as
prejudicial towards black and Latino New Yorkers.
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His sympathetic remarks for the waves of street rallies across the
United States last year against what protesters say are racist
police practices further angered some of his police officers.
On Wednesday, de Blasio, who has filled his recent speeches with
effusive praise for his police, told reporters at an unrelated event
that he disagreed with the suggestion by some union leaders that he
should apologize for his remarks.
"I respect the question," he said, "but the construct is about the
past, and I just don't want to do that. I think this is about moving
forward. I've always tried to tell the truth as I know it and I try
to be respectful."
He said it was too soon for him to say whether there was a police
slowdown.
"We're going to let this week pass," he said, "and at the end of
this week, we will make judgments and we will act accordingly."
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Michael Perry)
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